Insurance cannot remove the risk or the likelihood that one might become a victim of any of these events, but what it does is transfer all or some of the financial impact of any of these events. Insurance exists to help individuals recover from the financial consequences of these events by pooling the resources of a large group to pay for the losses of a small group.

[...]

Law of Large Numbers

In order to afford to cover the financial losses of its customers, an insurance company needs a very large base of members. For each different type of loss that they insure against, insurance companies have years of statistics that help them calculate how many losses they are likely to have. They are counting on the law of large numbers which, when applied to insurance, states that the more members in an insured group, the more likely it is that the number of actual losses will be very close to the number of expected losses....

Many bristle at the health insurance individual mandate, primarily because, under the individual mandate, the government is requiring the individual to buy a particular product. Furthermore, according to THIS, the individual mandate has several significant hazards.

A matter that I've been puzzling about for some time:

Considering the rising costs of health care, the rising costs of health insurance premiums, and the coming tsunami of aging Baby Boomers (resulting in reduced opportunity for transfer of risk as well as a reduced tax base for funding private health insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid), what is the viable alternative to the individual mandate for health insurance?

WARNING! The comments thread to this post contains a heated discussion.

Bravo, FJ. If only you actually believed that rather than stalk me with sock puppets for presenting precisely that "no one has a "right" to be taken care of, but THAT is why we have private charitable organizations" argument to you several times.

I guess beating it into your head for the past 4 months finally took. Everyone clap for Capt. Obvious.

By "viable alternative," I am not only referring to the "right" to being taken care of. I am also referring to the survival of private health insurance and to the survival of medical care facilities (primarily hospitals and nursing homes).

If private health insurance companies have many insureds with expensive pre-existing conditions, how can those insurance companies survive? Raise the premiums to transfer the risk, and policies are priced out -- except for the very wealthy, many of whom don't carry any insurance at all as they can pay for whatever comes down the pike.

Most of us clearly don't fall into the category of being able to pay for our own elder care -- if we live past age 85.

At the moment, some 80% of those in nursing homes are on Medicaid -- and most of those residents didn't enter via Medicaid. Rather, they exhausted all assets while in the facilities and ended up on Medicaid.

Medicare doesn't pay for residential care.

Residential care monthly bills presently range from $2000 to $20,000 a month. The low-end monthly bills are for those in end stage Alzheimer's and the like: warehousing with no medications to speak of. I know about those warehousing facilities because my mother-in-law is in one. She reached the point that she couldn't be cared for at home.

By "viable alternative," I am not only referring to the "right" to being taken care of. I am also referring to the survival of private health insurance and to the survival of medical care facilities (primarily hospitals and nursing homes).

Matthew 26:11

There is no way to end poverty that doesn't impoverish someone else or make everyone equally impoverished.

Obomneycare's take over of 1/6th of America's GDP to bring health care to 13% of the population that is by choice or circumstance uninsured is a losing proposition, as you well know.

Perhaps a supply side solution? Increase the number of nursing home facilities and staff and let the overabundance compete for patients via lower pricing.

Of course, you'd have to take away the Welfare State programs that have driven up medical costs in general and make the expansion of facilities and staff prohibitively costly.

Far-Left Naderite totalitarian Welfare Statist FJ will just have to stop making sock puppets online and pitch in with his granny's health care for a change.

I do have a right to an insurance policy I've paid for, beamish. So pay up. And stop endorsing totalitarian wannabe presidential candidates like Newt and Mitt. And stop bad mouthing Constitutionalists like Ron Paul.

But no, you'll back the Statist totalitarians EVERY time.... and then whine about ObomneyCare. Hypocrite.

I agree. So, you'll wean yourself off of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and start paying for yourself again in your third year of retirement?

No?

So pay up.

It's not my $15 Trillion debt, Baby Doomer. Be happy living off less than 12% of your current income, or don't retire.

Or, you know, stop being a parasite and make yourself useful to yourself and your family so you're not begging for help behind a high-speed internet connection in a centrally cooled and heated two car garage house with a big yard and color plasma screen TV in every room.

"No one has a right to be taken care of" but people are "ugly self-centered and dispicable (sic)" if they don't pitch in to pay for FJ's granny's respirator so he can do his tireless totalitarian gay left-wing demogogue schtick on the internet.

I posed this question in all seriousness. Let's not turn the thread into a blog feud or blog war. We have another thread here dedicated to the dispute.

As most who are familiar with my situation here, I've been puzzled about this matter for well over two years.

I was absolutely stunned when I saw the nursing home bill for five weeks. $15,000! Mr. AOW's private insurance policy covered that bill in full because (1) he had reached the $50000 annual maximum out of pocket and (2) he was in the facility for PT, OT, and ST. The therapy was successful, and I brought Mr. AOW home, but I had to threaten litigation to get him released from the nursing home. See THIS.

Since that time, I've been doing quite a bit of research on related topics. Hence, this featured question in this post.

I'm honestly trying to figure out how the health care industry and families are going to stay solvent with the coming tsunami of aging Baby Boomers.

Beamish,Perhaps a supply side solution? Increase the number of nursing home facilities and staff and let the overabundance compete for patients via lower pricing.

Of course, you'd have to take away the Welfare State programs that have driven up medical costs in general and make the expansion of facilities and staff prohibitively costly.

A statistic to support your second paragraph in the excerpt above....

A few years ago, the monthly bill for the Hebrew Home in NYC was $18,0000. Once the patient was finally spent down (bankruptcy), Medicaid kicked in -- to the tune of a mere $1000/month. Obviously, paying patients were taking up the slack until that time that Medicaid kicked in. It wasn't a matter of turning off a respirator; the old lady in the case I'm mentioning was sharp mentally; however, she was paralyzed from the waist down. Both of her children (no grandchildren) were over 60 years old and couldn't physically care for their mother; nor did the children earn enough money to pay $18,000/month -- even if the two split the monthly fee.

Also, I'm puzzling over cases like that of my mother-in-law. She's on no life support or even medication. Yet, she lives on. If you can call it living when one is in the final stage -- and I do mean "final" -- of Alzheimer's.

Anyway, the point of this post isn't to tell my own woes or the woes of my family.

Rather, I'm trying to figure out how private health insurance can survive if the risk factors that make insurance possible are skewed the way they are now.

Poverty cannot be eliminated. Surely, private health insurance -- and, yes, Medicare, too -- has eliminated the number of individuals and families falling prey to medical bankruptcy. But what happens when those insurance plans are inadequate or disappear entirely because shared risk takes down the insurance plans?

Thersites,The only "viable" alternative IS the free market. No, no one has a "right" to be taken care of, but THAT is why we have private charitable organizations.

Can those private organizations keep up with the tsunami?

Back in the days before Medicare and Medicaid (about 1956), my father's mother, who had dementia to the extent that she tried to kill me, a baby in the crib -- more than once. In fact, she was relentless.

Grandma had to go to a nursing home for IV vasodilators and couldn't be out and about for more than 2 days at a time. We couldn't find affordable help to take care of Grandma at home. All the adults in the family had jobs, and stepping out of those jobs wasn't financially feasible or physically feasible on all counts.

The cost of Grandma's care was funded by my father and my uncle (her only two surviving children). She lived several years in that nursing home.

As a result of my parents and my aunt and uncle having to pay for Grandma's care, there were no funds available for my cousins and for me to go to college, but all of us managed to get scholarships -- or to borrow money that my cousins paid off by getting government jobs after college graduation.

Anyway, my point is that family care of an elderly parent or grandparent has ripple effects.

In any solution to the coming tsunami of the old and very old -- and ailing -- ripple effects need to be considered.

I posed this question in all seriousness. Let's not turn the thread into a blog feud or blog war. We have another thread here dedicated to the dispute.

Before I proceed with the rest of your comments, let me tell you that I understand that. It's just that this particular topic has been one impetus of FJ's stalker grudge against me in his underwhelming and tedious crusade to annihilate all doubt that he's a blithering idiot for nearly 4 months now.

I had to say something when, after reading his barrage of spammed imbecilic left-wing arguments and hackneyed attempts to insult his intellect superiors for nearly four months now, he essentially adopted the position I've held unassailed all along and is now squirming to extricate himself from said four months of jackassery by returning to being a name-calling jackass.

We've already discovered FJ's petty grudge against me goes beyond his neon obvious inability to string a coherent thought together. I merely give him the parsimonious sort of attention and consideration he deserves.

If you can figure out a way to contextualize and color his insipid blog grudge behavior into being valid participation on this thread's topic, I'd like to see the math. Otherwise, you may consider putting the far-left homosexual Naderite in the spam disposal box, as I do at my blog.

Nope. They can't even cope with 1/100th of the problem. The federal government won't let them. They're enforcing their social services monopoly through imposition of costly regulations on health service providers (worker certification, minimum standards of treatment (ie -birth control), minimum wages, etc.).

Another major difference today in the publically financed programs lies in the demographics. Roe v. Wade didn't exist when Social Security's Ponzi Scheme was established. Over fifty-four million real potential Social Security contributors since 1973 won't contribute a penny to the program to keep it solvent, they were aborted. That's one less worker per current retiree.

In order for the current system to have worked, you'd have needed a large base of healthy people who paid into the system for forty years w/o collecting any benefits. So you either need to establish a high birth rate, or a high immigration rate. This helps explain why Democrats LOVE the idea of immigrant amnesty... to offset their reckless abortion policies.

But that's neither here nor there. Needless to say, the publically financed system is a sham that is rapidly failing, and the sooner people understand that it's NOT going to be around when their turn to collect comes, the better. The only people we can depend upon to take care of us when we get older are our own families. Because they are ultimately the only ones who love us sufficiently to sacrifice for us. And the last thing they need, is the federal government trying to "regulate" how they do that, and take MORE money away from them to shore up the ever more rapidly failing public MESS that they've made by "expanding" benefits, be it through presciption drugs OR Obamacare.

Now, I knew in advance that the topic of this post would be "a problem" for you and FJ. However, this topic is one that I've been wrestling with for some time.

I've read two books on the topic: Never Say Die and Bittersweet Season. I can't say that the authors are conservatives.

Do conservatives have books about this topic?

In my view, this topic is THE elephant in the room. The time has arrived that we should not ignore that elephant.

Yes, the situation in this household has brought this topic to the fore for Mr. AOW and me. You already know many of the particulars.

Over and over again, the health care institutions and our private policy carrier urged that Mr. AOW and I divorce, thus nearly destroying me financially (taking away at least $200,000 of my assets, that $200,000 amount a conservative estimate of the cost of Mr. AOW's nursing-home care until a divorce could be finalized) and putting Mr. AOW onto Medicaid. Everything, including Mr. AOW's IRA and my IRA was "on the table." We fought the battle and won, but only because I pulled out all the stops. People who are older may not be able to pull out all of those stops -- for various reasons.

Couples all over the United States are divorcing because of situations similar to that of Mr. AOW and me.

So, I'm trying to figure out a viable alternative to more the Nanny State approach.

I'm honestly trying to figure out how the health care industry and families are going to stay solvent with the coming tsunami of aging Baby Boomers.

In two words, they're not.

By the year 2025, the growing burden of so-called "entitlement" spending is going to consume not just every dollar the federal government takes in, but EVERY dollar the federal government could POSSIBLY take in from Americans. The costs of America's "entitlement" programs alone will exceed 100% of America's GDP. We'll have an economic collapse, borrowing money from abroad to help fund Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and borrowing still more money from abroad to cover other government and private functions.

You are correct to identify this as a "tsunami." The Baby Doomer lifestyle and economic model - let someone else pay for it - is a failure. No amount of legislation is going to create utopia. Those that can't learn from math are going to be dumbfounded when history brings its cold reminders into play.

We need to push aside the idiot lobby (which FJ adequately represents, BTW) that wants to moderate and manage inevitable failure. Those that say "Yeah, jamming a fork in your eye five inches deep is bad. Can we just jam it in there four inches instead?"

Affordable health care needs to be incentivized, because it can't be mandated. The only way to do that is supply side. Increase the amount of health care options available in the private sector, and let price competitiveness dictate consumption.

You know, the same way people settle for a Toyota Corolla they can afford rather than demand Welfare State subsidies for their Ferrari fantasies. People who can't afford the cheap car ride a bike or take the bus wherever the bus runs, or call in a taxi for the surgically precise trip from A to B and back to A.

We can't make the Ferraris of medical treatment a handout to people who can't afford band-aids. That idiot approach, the Ron Paul backstopped Great Society utopia, is precisely what is destroying the American economy.

Are expensive medical procedures ubiquitous enough to bring their costs down? Is there a way to make these procedures abundantly available thus easier to afford? Yes. Supply side economics has a solution for that too. By promoting economic growth across all sectors, the health care industry can broaden the range and availability of its services while at the same time people have broadened employment and advancement opportunities to create and KEEP their own wealth to pay for the same.

Privatization is the solution. Government is the problem.

Government is a big enough problem without additional noise from its far-left Naderite totalitarian cheerleaders, like you know who.

Yep. He stalks his intellectual betters with sock puppet effigies of them for months on end then retreats into illiterate applications of textbook Latin critical methodology terms when a spotlight is turned on his undeniable imbecility. He's sort of a living, breathing exemplar of fallacy-on-tap.

Ron Paul's left-wing advocacy of the Great Society utopia boondoggle destroying the American economy amounts to nothing more than "eviscerate defense and national security and throw the money into the Welfare State rathole."

That an imbecile like you imagines a solution to problems with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid insolvency appears on a Paulbot webpage that doesn't even acknowledge those issues by name, nor in passing, nor even in context is perhaps indicative of why appropriately regarding you as a left-wing laughingstock in all serious discussions will always be the end product of any level of examination you demand.

Paul Ryan's "right-wing social engineering" plan for "entitlement" programs wasn't endorsed by Ron Paul. He was a "no" vote, along with his fellow leftists across the aisle.

I don't like the Ryan Plan either because it's window-dressing with the same Baby Doomer "somebody tomorrow someday will pay for this" pie-in-the-skyism that has brought us to this brink of economic collapse in the first place.

Stop kicking the can down the road. There is no more road. Throw the can away.

We know that you don't like ANYTHING ANYONE other than you comes up with, beamish, be it Ron Paul or Paul Ryan or ANYONE.

Now state what you mean by "stop kicking the can down the road".

Because if we take you literally, it means, throw millions off their respirators.

Do you have a plan for transitioning from a public sector system or not. And if you do, what is it? And if you don't (which you don't), then deal with your "grandma killer" label... because it's what you rae.

I already have proved you wrong, on this very topic, at least fifteen to twenty times over the last four months.

I've even done that above, in this very thread. Incentivize affordable health care with supply side economics. It attacks the problem from three directions simultaneously. First it increases the amount of money all economic sectors have at their disposal. The health care industry can expand the availability of their services at the same time more and more people have more of their own income to pay to aquire those services. Second, without your utopian pie-in-the-sky "guarantees" passing the costs of your free ride onto actual paying customers, that price inflation is diminished. Third, we'd no longer be going broke, so you can keep your swimming pool pump hooked up year round, and maybe buy your granny a respirator if she needs one.

I'm not in the business of teaching illiterate left-wing imbeciles how to read. Perhaps AOW can help you with that, stalker fag.

The "can" is the onus for paying for that $15 Trillion and growing debt your irresponsible Baby Doomer gimme-ism has racked up. The "kicking" is your infantile demogoguing reformers as "Granny Killers" for the past 70+ years. The "road" is America's future ability to absorb the costs of your generation's freeloading.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy." - Alexander Fraser Tytler (often cited incorrectly as Alexis De Tocqueville)

My generation never freeloaded. We paid, and we paid and we paid. Why are you demonizing Americans like me who did nothing but pay? Why are you calling us "freeloaders"... because there aren't enough of YOUR generation to keep on paying, like WE did, before the system goes BUST?

Because "supply side" means doing something. Exactly "what" would you do that magically increases money available for investment in health care, doesn't cause inflation, and instills the consumer and business confidence necessary to achieve the results your magical "supply side phrase" supposedly accomplishes?

My generation never freeloaded. We paid, and we paid and we paid. Why are you demonizing Americans like me who did nothing but pay? Why are you calling us "freeloaders"... because there aren't enough of YOUR generation to keep on paying, like WE did, before the system goes BUST?

I see. There's currently a $15.3 Trillion national debt growing by $4 Billion a day because you "paid."

Not enough of my generation to keep on paying? What did your generation do with the savings from having less children and emphatically lower Social Security and Medicare payroll tax rates?

You "paid." BWHAHAHHAHAHA!

Come back with a real argument, totalitarian freeloader.

Pssst. It's a Ponzi scheme. Sustainability is impossible under any financial shell game gymnastics you wish to impose. Someone has to pay for your freeloading, stalker fag.

Ron Paul has put forward specific proposals to incentivize private health care funding. ALL the things you say we should be doing, he has proposed.

Ron Paul's "specific" proposal = "Take all the money we're collecting in taxes and borrowing from abroad to spend on defense and national security and spend it on backstopping the Welfare State Ponzi scheme."

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer." - Benjamin Franklin, Founding Neocon

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." - Narcotics Anonymous

Keep shoving that fork in your eye to different depths until you find the depth that isn't in your eye, stalker fag.

Wow. The imbecilic gay leftist FJ could have spent a little time alleviating some of his acute topic illiteracy, but chose instead to make another sock puppet to express his undying homosexual crush on me with.

Sad. As predictable as birdshit on a statue, but still sad.

AOW, let me know if you need assistance in finding a doctor that can prescribe something for those hallucinations you've had that FJ is even remotely intelligent.

Have I seen those blogs? Some of the posts. I will freely admit that I don't understand some of the posts -- nor do I care to. I'm not interested in everything.

I think that all who have been reading your comments about FJ understand what you've said. Your saying more doesn't make your statements any clearer or any more effective, IMO.

I'd like to get back to the subject of the blog post.

For the moment, I'm going back to read a long comment that you made earlier -- a comment about the topic of the blog post. I haven't finished reading it as I had two phone calls that interrupted my reading.

When I did a bit of research on the insurance's transfer of risk principle, the individual mandate SEEMS to be the only viable option.

The individual mandate was first proposed by the Heritage Foundation during the discussions of Hillarycare back in 1993. It has stuck in the minds of some conservatives who believe it should be the government's function to make sure people who pay for themselves aren't getting better health care than people who don't or can't.

The Heritage Foundation has since abandoned this flawed (and unconstitutional) idea in the ensuing 19 years of impact studies and cost analysis, for the same reasons those opposed to the individual mandate idea give now.

Beamish,Affordable health care needs to be incentivized, because it can't be mandated. The only way to do that is supply side. Increase the amount of health care options available in the private sector, and let price competitiveness dictate consumption.

I can't argue with that.

But here's the conundrum: What if the health care options are not affordable?

Also, there is something called "gaming the system": annual gifts and irrevocable trusts are two. Getting assets out of the loop prevent the state's seizure of those assets to fund medical care. This household hasn't done either of those things, but I know plenty of people who have.

Affordable health care needs to be incentivized, because it can't be mandated. The only way to do that is supply side. Increase the amount of health care options available in the private sector, and let price competitiveness dictate consumption.

I can't argue with that.

Great, AOW. Now you've gone and triggered an impending left-wing homosexual FJ hissy fit vendetta towards yourself. He really does want to convince you he's an imbecile, you know.

But here's the conundrum: What if the health care options are not affordable?

Why is that any more a "conundrum" than my inability to afford a $3.2 Million Bugatti Veyron? I need to be able to drive at 250 MPH on my way to work so I can spend more time drinking coffee before I head out. :P

There are plenty of affordable options in health care that may not be as trendy or effective as the ones you're currently priced out of accessing, but they're not phased out. It's not a "latest thang or nothing" proposition.

And they always will. A can of Spaghetti-Os will always be cheaper than dinner at Olive Garden no matter who's picking up the tab.

Perhaps the reason the most expensive health care options and the availability of insurance providers that will cover their costs at an affordable rate is so rarified is because those options aren't ubiquitous enough to bring down their costs.

It's pretty much tautological. Being rich and being poor do ultimately have to have clear distinctions.

Also, there is something called "gaming the system": annual gifts and irrevocable trusts are two. Getting assets out of the loop prevent the state's seizure of those assets to fund medical care. This household hasn't done either of those things, but I know plenty of people who have.

Studies suggest some 30% or more of Medicare and Medicaid expenditures is going toward fraudulent claims.

Imagine if most of that 30% of health care "entitlements" was taken away from wasteful endeavors and directed instead at specifically helping the most ill of the most poor?

About your offer....I never said that I agreed with FJ on all matters. If I recall correctly, I referred to literature and brain matters.

It wasn't intended as a loaded question. I may even find myself on rare occassions in agreement with the gay leftist Naderite on a few matters.

Like above, at the start of this thread, when I pointed out that he had essentially adopted my position wholesale after having it slapped into him continuously and unchangingly over the past four months.

You can see in this thread itself how grievously it has affected FJ to begrudgingly concede defeat, which of course nurtured his grudge even more. You'd think if being a loser was such a burden on FJ's fragile gay psyche, he'd stop being a loser before his family commits him to 24 hour psychiatric observation... again.

No, the thrust of my offer to help you find treatment for hallucinating that FJ is intelligent was aimed at finding out if you still suffer from these hallucinations, or if you ever did.

I missed your announcement of family troubles as my last post went up, so let me offer you support and hope that things are okay. Perhaps your family finding you reliable in times of emergency is something you can instill in FJ once you've taught him to read.

Beamish,Things are okay for the moment with my cousin. I don't have to head down the road.

------------------

But here's the conundrum: What if the health care options are not affordable?

Why is that any more a "conundrum" than my inability to afford a $3.2 Million Bugatti Veyron?

Here's why.

I found Mr. AOW down on the floor. I phoned 911. Then came the ambulance, and off the hospital he went.

For the next 9 weeks, he was in one facility or the other. The second facility refused to release him home. Had I brought him home AMA (Against Medical Advice), the health insurance policy would have been automatically canceled.

In truth, he couldn't have come home from that second facility. He had no sense of balance: frontwards, backwards, side to side. Not to mention the issue with aspiration.

If those medical issues hadn't been brought under control, he would have remained in the nursing home for the rest of his life -- first as a paying customer, then as a ward of the state as the accumulation of joint assets were consumed (assuming I didn't divorce him as I mentioned above).

Now, here's something I've never shared before....When the ICU wanted to put Mr. AOW on a ventilator, I refused. Back when Mr. AOW had brain surgery in 1993, we had decided against using a respirator, particularly if there existed no reasonable chance of getting him weaned from that respirator (as is often the case). FYI....Even after weaned from a respirator, serious medical issues usually remain. Those can include living in a sterile bubble -- something that cannot be accomplished in a normal house.

And here's something else....If we shift the cost of burden of care to the children of the elderly, then how long can the children afford their own and their children's health care, be that health care via insurance or fee for service?

I remember the days of fee for service. Those days weren't all bad by any means.

That said, I do know of one recent, particular case in which the parents were required to write a check for the treatment of their 13-year-old son suffering from meningitis before the doctors would go any further. The young man did recover. The parents had the money. But suppose the parents did not have the money. They are to stand by and watch their child die?

Now, it is my own view that the cost of medical care has increased, at least in part, because we DO have health insurance and government assistance. "The pool of money we can get" AND discounted rates having to be made up for by the paying customers.

Would we be better off with nobody having insurance? With everybody having insurance? With sending less money overseas to help underdeveloped nations with health care? Just a few questions to consider.

Legalizing Assisted Suicide and Involuntary Euthanasia -- for those INDIVIDUALS, FAMILY MEMBERS and LIFE PARTNERS who WANT it -- are the only viable alternatives to BANKRUPTCY and HOMELESSNESS -- or a life that becomes a JAIL SENTENCE for those directly involved in these tragic circumstances who have more than adequate funds.

LIFE is for the LIVING -- not the LIVING DEAD.

Who should make the decision as to when to "pull the plug?"

Why the PATIENT, if he or she is conscious and aware -- or THOSE WHO MUST BEAR THE BURDEN OF TAKING CARE OF AHUMAN BEING WHO HAS TURNED INTO A VEGETABLE.

That's it. Our notion that we must keep LIVING CORPSES ALIVE AS LONG AS POSSIBLE is INSANE.

That said, I am militantly and unalterably opposed to having ANY form of GOVERNMENT make these decision FOR us. PERIOD!

Religious fanatics should stay the HELL away from this issue, and SHUT THEIR GOD-DAMNED MOUTHS unless they, themselves, are directly involved.

If people WANT to martyr themselves to a hopeless cause, and WANT to suffer BANKRUPTCY, EVICTION, BEGGARY and STARVATION on the streets, that should be THIER prerogative.

I am totally for SELF-DETERMINATION of the INDIVIDUAL -- except when the individual loses his or her mind irrevocably.

Those imbeciles who carried on like banshees over Terri Schiavo vainly imagining a person in her condition she had a right to "live." Offended me more deeply than anything the Muslims and the Communists have EVER done.

And yes I m DEADLY serious, and do not care what others may think of me for stating this opinion. Unlike most people who mouth off with pious-sounding hysteria on this issue I KNOW whereof I speak.

If you WANT to be martyr, go ahead and BE a martyr. Just don't you DARE even THINK of asking me to join you.

There are a LOT of things worse than death. Outliving your life is high on the list among them.

If left to the State, we will all die penniless wards of the state. The system is designed to suck you dry before you die... and when you die, it will likely be of neglect.

And even if you manage to set millions aside, you will die a penniless ward of the state. THAT is the reality of the current system. Those that can pay, pay for those who can't until they are spent out, and no onecares enough to follow up on the neglected.

I hasten to add, because of my high respect for AOW and her husband, that I am NOT referring to illnesses of the kind Mr. AOW suffers with -- but my thinking most CERTAINLY applies to the Killer Grandma AOW described.

What a blessing euthanasia would have been in her case and others like it!

We treat our termimally ill pets better than we treat each other. It's time for that to stop.

Is my mother-in-law one? She is in the last of the final stages of Alzheimer's Disease. When she can no longer swallow, that will be the end as none of us have authorized a feeding tube or IV nutrition.

Are the nightmares that I saw in the pediatric ward of the nursing home LIVING CORPSES? The conditions I saw could best be described as "basket cases." I have no idea as to how aware these children are.

A fact that few know: resucitation after a certain age typically leads to a nightmare outcome. Yes, one can post a DNR in one's home, but once in the ambulance, a patient is "brought back" on the way to the hospital -- in spite of the DNR. It is also difficult to use the DNR in an ICU, often the 911 destination.

I'm not making light of your situation. Honestly, I'm not. Your situation (and others like it) are what a government assistance program should be EXCLUSIVELY endeavoring to assist with. A smaller, leaner, more efficient assistance program focused on real income / medical need disparities.

I too believe estimates of 30% fraud in Medicare are generously favorable on the side of government.

But to reform that, the unserious left-wing gay Naderite argument naturally shifts from accusations of "granny killing" to "granny torturing." Any attempt at changing the course of FJ's beloved enlistment to totalitarianism will be met with demogoguery from him and his fellow far-leftists.

The "tsunami," the "elephant in the room," is that no matter what people capable of rational thought and their polar opposites over in FJ's Ron Paul / Ralph Nader kiddie pool believe, the present system is inherently flawed and inevitably an epic fail. It's already failing!

"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." - Winston Churchill

FJ and his fellow far-leftists want to equalize misery. Pro-growth economic solutions are invariably going to be out of the question for the adamantly stupid.

My maternal grandmother did better. She had an agreement with her doctor: "Keep me on my feet. When you can't, let me go."

And that's what happened one day. However, at nurse at the hospital told my mother when her mother finally ended up there, "YOU are killing your own mother by not letting us hook up your mother to a respirator."

Once the family doc showed up, my grandmother was made comfortable. Her terminal medical problems at that point, at the age of 83, were congestive heart failure and TIA's, BTW. AND she had specified, "No respirator or feeding tube for me." Mom was complying with my grandmother's issues.

Mr. AOW and I have our agreement as to end-of-life care, an agreement that dates back to 1993, when he had brain surgery for a benign tumor (acoustic neuroma). I won't go into the particulars -- except to say that it doesn't involved euthanasia or a suicide pact.

The situation we have here is doable. Mr. AOW has his mind. He can make potty transfers on his own. He is out of diapers. In fact, this evening we went out to dinner to celebrate my upcoming birthday.

However, if he had remained in a condition of severely compromised balance, incontinence, and impaired cognition (conditions that he still had when I sprang him from the nursing home), the situation here would not be doable -- unless, of course, I had completely dropped out of the workforce, thus giving up my own health insurance some 5 years away from Medicare coverage. As it is, I doubt that I can work full time even now because (1) leaving Mr. AOW home alone with the risk of a fall is still quite high and (2) I suffer from a back injury of my own.

All caregivers themselves, regardless of age or gender, are but one lift or one fall away from severe physical injury.

Beamish,FYI....I've accepted no government help here with Mr. AOW's care.

Except for his upcoming Medicare, that is. His Medicare coverage begins March 1.

We searched for private health insurance for him. That was a no go. The monthly premium was over $1200/month -- and that was available only to those under age 65. I could find no private coverage for those over age 65.

The most conservative quote I had for Medigap coverage for Mr. AOW, age 62, was $908/month -- until I scoured around and found Aetna Medicare HMO.

------------

the present system is inherently flawed and inevitably an epic fail. It's already failing!

THAT has been my point all along!

So, now what must be done?

In my view, if conservatives don't come up with a viable solution, we're going to end up with national health care.

Also in my view, national health care (socialized medicine) will be "the solution." It's that transfer of risk thing again!

I can make the case that certain wealthy people shouldn't even be getting Medicare or Social Security at all. But what is "wealthy"? Income? Assets? Individual income? Couple income? Family income? The same goes for assets.

And how do we justify terminating Medicare and Social Security for those who have paid in? Or is justification not a factor if the whole system going to collapse anyway?

-------------

I've gotta go to bed. I have tutoring to do tomorrow and will need a clear head.

Religious fanatics should stay the HELL away from this issue, and SHUT THEIR GOD-DAMNED MOUTHS unless they, themselves, are directly involved.

FT, no pun intended, but A-freakin-MEN!

But, I do have a different perspective of the Terri Schiavo case. The state of Floriduh basically handled Ms. Schiavo as a piece of property in a civil suit between her blood family which wanted to take over financing her care, and her husband, who wanted her in the ground so he could collect on a life insurance policy.

I won't get into the suspicious nature of the injuries Ms. Schaivo sustained with only her husband around that led to her initial hospitalization. God's a better judge of that than anyone. But there's enough unseemliness there to question the rush to starve her to death.

I will just note that for some reason painkillers were given to the "unresponsive" Ms. Schiavo throughout the 13 days she was starved to death.

I remember debating the Terri Schiavo issue when it was current. For some reason, not a one of the participants on the pro-kill side of the argument would admit a willingness to shoot Ms. Schiavo in the face, behead her, beat her with a brick, gas her out with Zyklon-B, nothing. They were content to just let her starve to death.

That seemed really awkward to me. I believe, honesty, a good part of America's national character died that day.

I resolved to never, ever sign a "do not resuscitate" order. If the state wants to kill me, let it be by Predator drone.

Lol! I guess you mental midget would prefer to go back to a time (just a few years ago, in fact) where you had to have a freakin' spaghetti dinner at the local Legion to help pay for your brothers life saving surgery.

I think that DNRs have their place. After Mr. AOW's father was revived time and again after a terrible heart attack and with brain damage that meant he would be a vegetable even if he live support kept him "alive," we decided that a DNR is important.

In my father's case (terminal lung disease), the family doc recommend a DNR be posted in Dad's home. Dad was 85 years old at the time. He lived another year and a half. He was out doing his grocery shopping on a Tuesday and died on a morphine drip at the hospital on Saturday night.

No nursing home! No home care!

I served as Dad's medical proxy. All his papers, including his living will, were in place. When the ambulance came for Dad on Wednesday evening, Dad said, "You have those papers. Use them. Remember what I said: 'No nursing home. EVER.'"

Families need to have "the conversation." Dad had the conversation with me shortly after Mom died. He had the conversation with the family lawyer, who drew up all necessary papers. He also had the conversation with the family doc. It was old-time medical care at its best.

Dad even had his funeral clothes set aside in his closet.

Dad was a realist.

And he was the only member of his generation NOT to die in a nursing home.

When the "insurance runs out", most people haven't the strength to walk away from the hospitals and instutions that are treating them or their loved ones and simply go home (to either make the best of a bad situation, or accept the inevitable). And even if they HAD the strength, the institutions will do everything in their powers to oppose them, and characterize their actions as "not being in the best interest of the patient."

...and if the insurance "never runs out" (Katy barr the door, ObamaCare gets realized)... why would a family EVER choose to simply go home and accept death? Why not avail ones-self of all the "extraordinary measures" to preserves life down to it's ultimate possible last precious second? Pain? The doctors will ensure that you never feel a thing... they can literally keep you doped up for years. And if you survive, we've got a nice ward full of Terry Sciavo's where you can get watered daily.

Once you enter into a hospital with a diagnosis, you have little control over the situations that will lead to catastrophic medical expenses and financial ruin.

Absolutely!

I wish that I'd said that!

But there was a time that patients and family had more control over what happened in the hospital. I exerted a great deal of control over the treatment that Mr. AOW received -- but not enough for Mr. AOW (more on that later, maybe). But I had experience in that sort of thing: Dad, my maternal grandmother, my father-in-law.

Here in Virginia, one can design iron clad advanced medical directives. In fact, the forms are available online.

Again, "the conversation" is of critical importance!

I have to get my advanced medical directive done this summer and name my cousin as medical proxy (notarization required). The health care industry likely will not accept Mr. AOW's word. Besides, getting him to the hospital is a Herculean task.

The DNR and Living Will instruction options (and who knows how long THEY would survive our do-gooder legislators) are often the only thing standing between a family and automatic impoverishment and perpetual institutionalization. Now under ObamaCare, the "professionals" will wag these orders under their patients noses and pressure them all to sign them... because the State will save tons the more people choose to die... but ALL of these people will die penniless and without dignity. All of them.

Me, I want to die in MY bed, when I choose to no longer prolong my existence, not when some nurse gets tired of changing my diaper.

Many, many nursing home residents do not have dementia. Rather, their problems are often purely physical.

Many could stay in their own homes if (1) those homes had the necessary adaptations and (2) a caregiver schedule was in place.

For example, if this house had a wider door into the kitchen and special appliances, if someone came in once a day to empty the bedside potty, Mr. AOW could stay home alone without anyone else living here. A caregiver visit every few days would take care of the rest: bathing, laundry, etc. With only one functional hand, Mr. AOW needs somebody to lay out his medicine.

He'd also need someone to take him to the doctor a few times a year.

If we ever get out of this house, we'll have that one done up with the necessary adaptations. We would move to Dad's house, which he and Mom specifically bought with aging in place in mind. In fact, we've already had some remodeling done over there.

Nope. Merely a plot device to convince you ( or your family members) that if you haven't signed one, the medical authorities are defacto in charge, and that YOU (or you family members) don't have any "rights".

Considering that there's a large contingent of the so-called "scientific community" willing to abide the existence of the pre-natal and neo-natal medical professions while yet arguing that an enwombed human wrapped in amniotic fluid isn't really "alive" despite detectable brain activity, there's no way in hell I'm signing a form that declares a doctor can determine if I'm "alive enough" to give medical care to.

...which in turn goes back to costs. A doctor has a right to compensation for the services he provides.

If I stop making car payments, the car loan people come and repossess my car, and they don't give a crap if I need transportation to work.

If I stop making mortgage payments, the bank forecloses and tosses me out of my house, and they don't give a crap if I need a place to live and keep my schwag.

If I stop buying food, my grocer isn't going to feed me, and doesn't give a crap if I starve to death.

If I stop making medical payments, my doctor isn't going to treat me, and doesn't give a crap if I'm going to die without my insulin. [I will say that changing my diet has largely "cured" this problem]

If I want a Bugatti Veyron but can't afford one, I don't expect my fellow Americans to buy me one, or give a crap that I don't have one. It's not their fault I can't afford one, after all.

So, for health care costs, there is only one practical solution that attacks the problem from three different angles.

1. Supply side economics puts more money in everyone's pockets through lower taxation. The medical industry has an incentive to expand and lower costs competitively, and consumers have more money to buy into the resulting expansion of options, and contribute to private charitable institutions that manage crises far more effectively than their super-wealthy but fraud-ridden government analogues.

2. The caps and / or elimination of government subsidization no longer would drive health care costs upwards while taxing down the amount paying consumers have at their disposal to pay for health care services

3. Growing the economy shrinks the national burden of caring for the most poor among us. Less people will need access to government subsidization. The cost of government subsidization would naturally diminish.

...perhaps it's time to exploit the coming "holy war" between church and Welfare State that has come from the "unholy alliance" that created the Welfare State at the church's behest in the first place.

FDR's New Deal initiatives sailed to fruition largely on the lofty sermons coming from the "social justice" theologies hollered from Catholic and Protestant pulpits in the 1920s.

Now people go to the government, instead of church, for help.

Now government is telling church-run hospitals to violate their own ecclesiologies on birth control and abortion.

The heart asks pleasure first,And then excuse from pain ––And then those little anodynes That deaden suffering.

And then to go to sleep,And then –– if it should beThe will of it's Inquisitor ––The liberty to die.

~ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

That could have been -- and should have been -- the final word on this damnably depressing subject.

I can only repeat:

LIFE IS FOR THE LIVING -- NOT THE LIVING DEAD.

And who are the living dead?

Anyone who FEELS that he belongs in that category, and anyone charged with the responsibility of looking after a mindless, totally dysfunctional person who has lost every shred of memory, reason, skill, will and desire -- anyone who is violently out of control. The caregivers of the helpless and hopeless MUST be given the right -- and the proper means -- to euthanize the Living Dead.

Again and again and again I emphasize that this MUST be left up to the judgment of the individuals directly involved.

No one has knowledge superior to theirs -- and no one has a better right to make the decision to administer quick-acting poison guaranteeing a painless INSTANT death.

I've spent a great deal of time visiting in (high class) nursing homes. They are not much more inviting than Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka and Theresenstadt must have been. Possibly less so, because in the German Death Camps your premature demise was virtually guaranteed. In the modern American Nursing Home, the powers that be want to keep you breathing as long as possible, so they can extract every last sheckel out of your suffering hide.

Your "quality of life" means nothing to your jailers -- their goal is to achieve the longest possible protraction of your suffering. Your miserable, tortured existence enables them to thrive -- wicked ghouls that they are.

How many times have I heard helpless, hopeless elderly people cry out from their beds of pain, "O, Lord! PLEASE let me DIE! WHY can't I DIE? I want to DIE." And then the sobbing begins all over again.

No thanks! I'd rather seal myself in the garage with a full tank of gas while I'm still ambulatory rather than let that happen to ME.

I doubt very much if "Hell," itself, could be any worse than the myriad "Hells" we insist on devising for ourselves here on earth in our ceaseless efforts to mind each other's business.

That "Law of Unintended Consequences" has produced consequences the well-meaning "conservatives" among us have intentionally done nothing about until it's damned near too late to do so even if they actually wanted to.

1). Supply side economics favouring medical providers like supply side economics favouring green energy producers? Why would I want to tip the economies scales against the market to favor health care?

No thanks. I'll take the Ryan plan. Move everyone to private health insurers. Get government the 'f OUT of the "insurance business". Let them police the providers. Government is only good for one thing... kicking butts.

That "Law of Unintended Consequences" has produced consequences the well-meaning "conservatives" among us have intentionally done nothing about until it's damned near too late to do so even if they actually wanted to.

I think that it may well be too late.

I've posed this same question about insurance to others who do not blog. Nobody has a viable solution.

Again, it's that transfer of risk thing. With the pool of low risks rapidly shrinking due to the aging Boomers, we've got an unsustainable situation.

And not only for private health insurance! The same applies to Medicaid -- for certain.

I posed this featured question because I thought that somebody would come along with answers that are viable. Maybe there simply are no viable answers!

Frankly, I see no way to avoid nationalized health care before 2050 rolls around. Maybe sooner.

Colleges are beginning to reduce tuition rates, AoW. Market forces are returning to an area that hasn't seen a recession for over sixty+ years.

The government is GREAT at creating "bubbles" through tax incentives and direct subsidization. It's long past time we began to step back from crony capitalism through direct government intervention into the economy.

It's not "capitalism" that is failing world-wide. It's neo-liberal attempts to distort capitalism that are failing.

...unless, of course you're still trying to convince AOW that you're an imbecile by claiming a supply side favoring the private sector to the effect of cessation of goverment subsidizing the health care industry would create a government subsidization of the health care industry.

You really ought to give up your failed crusade to be relevant to this discussion. It's not impressing anyone.

I posed this featured question because I thought that somebody would come along with answers that are viable. Maybe there simply are no viable answers!

Reality is a viable answer, harsh and undeniable that it is. Reality don't care if people don't like it.

If someone comes along and doubles America's GDP in 8 years as Reagan did, we may lengthen the "road" that the can is to be kicked down, but even that doesn't stop America from it's addiction to can kicking.

Beamish, you're still terribly young . Forty is barely the end of adolescence in our demented culture -- and I'm not sure it really ends there -- or at all -- for many.

Someday -- not that I'd wish it on you, even though we've had our differences -- you may find yourself alone in a hospital bed, paralyzed from the neck down, unable to control your bladder or your bowels, unable to chew or enjoy the taste of food. You will be "fed" through a tube. You may find it difficult to breathe. You may be blind, deaf, unable to speak, unable to hear -- yet fully cognizant inside the ruin of your body which has become your prison. You will be treated like a THING, because you won't be able to communicate.

People will talk about ABOUT you right in front of you --as though you were not present -- the way they might talk about a picture or a lamp, or an unmade bed.

Perfect strangers will prod and poke at you, stuck needles into you, clean the flood of urine and excrement from your loins. They will adhere to coldly clinical "professional" standards, because they might be monitored and lose their job if they don't. There will be no affection, no pleasure, no pity, no real regard for you, because in their minds -- and those of everyone around you -- you will have become an OBJECT -- a BURDEN -- an unpleasant DUTY that must be performed -- something they'd rather forget when they go home after their shift is finished -- something your family won't want to visit, believe me.

You may be in agonizing pain, but you won't be able to describe it, and no one will care. There will be no relief.

You will be in HELL, Beamish, and there's no telling how long your time of endless torture will last. People have lived in just the condition I've described -- and WORSE -- for DECADES. There is a very real possibility this could happen to you, if you don't have a DNR -- and as AOW has said, it's still likely even if you do.

Unless you are fortunate enough to have a loving spouse like AOW to run interference for you -- unlikely in your case, I'm reasonably certain -- you will totally ALONE -- totally at the mercy of paid workers who have no more feeling for you than most people have for the dust that must be swept up, and the garbage that must be taken out periodically -- a fate worse than death.

You will not enjoy being alive then, I assure you. You will earnestly pray for death every minute of every agonized hour.

So go ahead and keep wasting your considerable intelligence and precious energy bugging and bedeviling your chosen objects of ridicule and contempt. It's a miserable way to get your kicks -- and an insult to our Creator who gave you life and intelligence for a much higher purpose.

Every one of us needs to WAKE UP and LIVE while we still have the capacity.

It's a very short distance from the cradle to the grave -- unless you are among those supremely unfortunate souls who undergo involuntary initiation into The Brotherhood of the Living Dead.

Stop WASTING your life, man. You are very smart, but woefully lacking in wisdom.

Don't blame me for your inability to express your economic positions in a coherent manner, beamish. Try as you might to convince us of your eligibility to enter the US Government's Witless Protection Program, these otherwise qualifying outbursts of yours simply prove that you have sufficient wit to desire entry into the program. Catch-22, Yossarian, if you're crazy enough to try and fake crazy... you must not be completely crazy.

And if you weren't advocating tax breaks for the medical industry in your description of "supply side abracadabra," then calling ME stupid for reading too much into your witless vaguiries are a bit of a stretch, even for a self-proclaimed "idiot-savant" as yourself.

So grow the 'f up beamish. YOU are the only one who takes YOUR positions seriously... the rest of us already know better. You have no actual positions, you're just a "street heckler" of your betters.

And for AoW's information, the universities lowering tuition include the following

"Have you heard of the phenomenon called 'suicide by doctor'? I've read that it's more frequent than we know about."

Hi, AOW, sorry to be so grim today, but this subject touches me deeply. I think you already know I've spent almost 50 of my 70 years dealing with invalids at close range. For the most part I'm glad I was able to be of service to people I loved, but at the same time I have to recognize that more than half my life was dominated by the desperate needs of others. Looking back I believe I never had much chance to be "young."

As for the term you cited, I've never heard it put just that way, but I do know that back in the good old days -- before the notion that every move we make and every breath we take must be monitored and either sanctioned or proscribed by GOVERNMENT -- that common sense usually held sway. In hopeless cases -- and situations where there was no one on hand able to take responsibility for the helpless -- nature was allowed to take it's course with doctors giving palliative care to help ease the stress of leaving his world. If a little too much morphine got into the blood ... well no decent person would try to make an issue of it.

All the various forms of FANATICISM -- political AND religious -- which now loudly compete for dominance have placed us at the mercy of the Judicial System -- a fearful Master who metes out ungodly strictures that have bound us as the ancient Egyptians bound their mummies. The difference is that WE are still alive inside our shrouds.

The malignant spirit of Litigiousness gave rise to Judicial Overreach and the subsequent Plague of Overregulation. Our minds have been rendered useless, our children have been deliberately "stupidified" in order to make them easier to control, and we can no longer call our souls our own.

What a nightmare we've made of our supposedly "free" society! Orwell's hideous prophecy has been fulfilled.

All we can do is take refuge in prayer. Someday, however, "they" in their infinite wisdom may very well confiscate all the Bibles.

I suppose every few thousand years we have to discover the wheel all over again.

AOW, I was 12 when my father had the stroke that paralyzed him from the neck down for six months. He was 44 at the time. I was told then that he very likely wouldn't be with us in six months. Something to hear when you're a child, I can tell you that.

Anyway, "they" were wrong, as "they" so often are, and father lived to age 69, but it was touch and go all the way. Yes, he recovered and even went back to work in a diminished capacity after a two-year period of convalescence, but he was never the same.

My dad had been a great star in his field, and had just been made vice president of a large corporation with 28 branches in cities all across the US when he had the stroke.

So, even though through the grace of God I've managed to have a very good life, but I could never say it hasn't been deeply shadowed by my father's tragic illness.

If I have appeared morbid today, I hope you will forgive me, but I do come by my opinions honestly.

If one escapes caregiving parents or grandparents, one will likely end up as caregiver for a spouse -- unless one if the ailing spouse, that is.

Mr. AOW escaped caregiving our ancestors -- except for some ten years of minor caregiving of my maternal grandmother, whom Mr. AOW carried out of the house for the last time when she needed to go to the hospital not on our local fire station's list. My grandmother, unable to speak and semi-conscious, was grabbing at the doorjambs with hands bloodied from wiping bloody spittle from her mouth. I came home from work and cleaned the doorjambs -- sobbing the entire time, of course.

But here Mr. AOW and I are -- he in a hospital bed in the living room and I as caregiver.

"Nobody gets out of here alive." Well, almost nobody escapes caregiving either -- unless has the money to do so, perhaps. Or unless the one who receives the caregiving is out of sight in the nursing home.

Usually, those of us to whom caregiving falls are not spring chickens. Mr. AOW and I are only 2.5 years apart. In fact, I'm now a few months older than Mr. AOW was when he had his stroke.

I woke up that morning of September 15, 2009, to find that my life was over. The doctor keeps insisting, "Not over, but changed." Well, he's wrong.

No more trips to Steubenville for the Dean Martin Festival, no travels as Mr. AOW and I had planned to do once we retired, no grocery shopping together, no more walking side by side with my husband, no dancing together, etc., etc.

Every night, before I fall asleep, I wonder how I'm managing to do what I do, Then, at last I fitfully fall asleep, only to get up the next morning and start all over again.

I am weary, weary, weary. Were I 10 years old, could I do this? I don't see how.

And who will do what I'm doing for Mr. AOW for ME? Nobody. In fact, I learned yesterday that my younger cousin, who MIGHT have been my caregiver, is seriously ill. Is it any wonder I couldn't sleep last night?

I don't mean to whine, but those are the thoughts I live with every day now.

I don't. I blame your illiteracy for your inability to understand me (funny that AOW does just fine in that regard, huh?) and your pettiness and smallness of character for continuing your weird vendetta against me instead of, you know, improving yourself.

One of my students had a massive brain hemorrhage at age 13 -- a complication of meningitis. The doctors pronounced him doomed; he recovered. He did have to learn to walk, talk, and read all over again. As one might expect, he has memory issues (memorizing terms and lists). However, he is a certified life guard and, with one extra year of high school, will be beginning college classes next year. The doctor see this young man's remarkable recovery as a miracle.

You did not have much time to be young. Do you ever resent that? I'm asking because the present generation seems to be very resentful if their the least inconvenienced.

How's your cross-eyed drive to liberate Rhawn Joseph's quackery from the category of psuedoscience going, dumbass? Did you give up in the face of laughter from the people who put his work in the category of psuedoscience?

What's up with you choosing battles you can't win anyway, FJ?

Forget your petty grudge with me, your god. How are you going to convince your wife you're not a loser after getting locked up in the psych ward over something your read on the internet?

I did not feel ignored. From the sound of it perhaps both of us have witnessed ore than "our fair share" of family tragic family disability. I've shared so many personal anecdotes probably because I want to show solidarity with you. Sometimes it's helpful just to know someone understands -- or at least wants to.

You ask if I've resented what I've had to deal with? I don't think so, although naturally I would have preferred if my father had not fallen ill in the prime of life. My mother was heroic in doing everything a wife ought to do above and beyond the call of duty, but I have to say she suffered a great deal with the long term effects.

I can certainly relate to your own frustration and disappointment at not being able to fulfill your dreams for the mature years of your marriage.

I remember Mrs. Reagan quietly lamenting her husband's inability even to remember the wonderful life they'd had together. She was alone with her memories tending a husband whose body lived on and on for ten years after he'd almost completely lost his mind.

One of my mentors (an important teacher in my college experience) held the tragic view of life -- said it always ends badly. She meant, of course, that we ought to "make hay while the sun shines," although she'd never have used such a phrase.

Of course I've gotten depressed, irritated and felt trapped every now and then along the way. I am no saint, but I've been fortunate to have loved the people I had to care for, and in the main feel that my life may have had more meaning -- a special kind of significance -- because I was able to make a difference that helped brighten some very dismal situations.

I know plenty of people who have had lasting marriages, more-than-adequate funds, and good health. God bless them all, but I have to say I sense a certain urgency that borders on desperation in their relentless attempts to enjoy "the good life." Frankly, I don't think they DO enjoy it all that much -- the endless cruises, compulsive exercise at the gym, earnest attempts to make a contribution through committee work, always trying new things, but rarely gaining much satisfaction from their pursuit of "happiness." It may sound delightful to you, but seen at close range it all seems very shallow -- like makework.

I'm a virtual prisoner in my home. Because of my eyesight I dare to drive more than two or three miles from the house and that on familiar roads just to perform necessary errands. I have a beautiful library, but can't read old-fashioned printed books or periodicals with any degree of comfort. I do get out two or three times a week to eat breakfast or lunch in nearby restaurants, but I could never go anywhere at night, unless someone takes me which doesn't happen very often.

Even so, I do not feel sorry for myself at all. I have many blessings, a long string of good memories, a serious interest in classical music, an active piano repertoire which I review and add to periodically, an interest in reading and writing poetry, tending plants, enjoying my two cats, a lively correspondence with many different people, and of course the thoroughly mixed blessing of posting at blogs and websites.

I can honestly say I'm never bored, and rarely lonely.

As you can tell from what I've written on this thread, I am anxious about what might become of me when I grow decrepit. Like you there will be no one to look after me. I've never had children, and the tattered remains of my family -- nothing but the children of cousins now in middle age with whom I have little in common, and who've shown no interest in me -- are scattered far and wide and have many problems of their own. Most of them have either done well financially or have wound up desperately poor. I'm fortunate to have some money, but it's not enough to meet the needs of those in dire straits. I'd be broke in less than a year if I tried to do that.

So, I'm on my own. However, I've always believed God is with me. I certainly could never have made it this far without His help, so perhaps I've been guilty of denying my faith when I betray so much anxiety about "The End." I always end my prayers asking Him to allow my death, whenever it comes, to "swift, merciful and sure."

Thank you for your patience with these confessions.

All I can say is take one day at a time, and just keep putting one foot in front of the other. God will pick you up and carry you when you grow too weary. He really will.

FT,I think that my resentment these days stems from the many battles I've had to do with the healthcare industry. All those forces were lined up to consign Mr. AOW to a nursing home for the rest of his life.

The only one I didn't have to do battle with was our family doctor.

At one point, I told the social worker at the nursing home, "We're not going to roll over just because YOU say so. People took care of others who had strokes for millennia before you people came along." The woman cringed as if I'd physically struck her.

Yes, I know that God is beside me at all times. But I don't "feel" His presence very often. Sure, I can look back and see how He guided me; for example, if not for blogging, I'd not have had that blogger come to Virginia from Florida to help me for six weeks about two months after I brought Mr. AOW home and was near collapse due to the workload of laundry alone. Five loads a day! Never one single night of sleeping all the way through without dealing with one or more loads of laundry, or a fall.

But I don't feel PRESENT guidance from Him. Strength from Him? Sure -- after the fact.

And I will have a sprigged gownWith lace to kiss my throat;I'll draw my curtain to the town,And hum a purring note.

And I'll forget the way of tears,And rock, and stir my tea.But Oh, I wish those blessed yearsWere further than they be!

~ Dorothy Parker

Don't know about you, but I love Dorothy Parker. I've read nearly all her poetry, and some of her short stories too. There was a great deal more to the woman than wisecracks and sarcastic humor. I'm afraid she wasn't very happy, but she sure was bright -- and very tender-hearted just below her brittle surface.

I don't know how you do it, AOW. I had a lot of help managing my aunt's care from age 90 till she died at 97. She had adequate funds to pay for in-home healthcare. I took a nursing course, and became an official home health aid in order to understand the situation better. I worked one eight-hour shift a day, myself, and did all the shopping and cooking for two households during those seven long years.

The hardest part was managing the nurses, who were great at tattling on each other and making up horrible stories about me. They were often spiteful, uncooperative and openly jealous of my aunt's financial circumstances. Hiring, firing and running interference between them was a real JOB, but I could never have done it all on my own without their help.

After three years of intrigue, back-biting and treachery, I was lucky to find two Russian woman who were well-educated. They had worked as professionals in Russia -- one had been a school principal the other a civil engineer. They worked well with me. They were much easier to deal with than the generally low-class, whiny, petulant, sometimes absurdly pretentious American women. Virtually all of them were aging divorcees down on their luck who'd had lousy husbands or tragic childhoods, etc. To add insult to injury they were all Democrats. ;-)

During this period I also had an invalid living in my house -- my former business partner. We had always gotten along very well, but he lost all his money making risky investments. He was much older than I and ill with diabetes, emphysema and heart disease. I felt very sorry for him, so so I took him in. I won't say it was a mistake, because it was the decent thing to do, but it certainly did nothing to ease my burdens.

He had to undergo quintuple bypass surgery almost immediately after moving in, and soon developed cancer, then kidney failure which required thrice weekly trips to the dialysis clinic.

You look back at these things and say, "How the hell did I DO it?" But I did -- coping with rapidly progressing corneal dystrophy all the while.

That's why I truly believe God HAD to be with me. How else cold I have survived? No He doesn't "talk" to me, I could never say that, but I talk to Him -- quite a lot -- and I never feel as though I'm just talking to myself.

God bless you I think you're genuinely heroic. Somewhere Oswald Chambers wrote that we derive our strength from the strain we must endure.

You're so smart beamish. No one could have figured out what that bumhead had said if you hadn't pointed out the missing word at the end of the sentence, "is".

beamish is SMART. He's a re-writer for Wikipedia! He re-writes, and re-writes and re-writes whatever is never quite right!

Everyone else is so stupid when compared to beamish.

...heh, heh, heh, heh.

You should be an editor, beamish. Maybe perhaps then you could express a complete and coherent thought of your own. Oh yeah, but then it wouldn't have been YOUR thought. And I know how you HATE that! But then, what do you do at Wikipedia again? Pose for NAMBLA posters?

FT,I'm not particularly heroic. I'm just a "determined German" (a phrase I coined). Fortunately, although Mr. AOW's condition is one of extreme disability, he is cognizant and strong enough to do some tasks now. So, instead of entering a decline, he has gone the other way, albeit in very tiny increments.

You're had more than your fair share of caregiving. Whatever "fair share" is.

Unless one has done down-and-dirty caregiving, one cannot possibly understand how grueling that task is. It wears on body AND mind.

I wouldn't want the envious little illiterate drama queen to break a nail hijacking threads and spamming blogs around the internet to profess his undying homosexual lust for me for any other reason.

But, I'm sorry FJ's sock puppetry and pettiness has shit on your blog again, AOW. I know of no way to administer a cure for his bizarre idol worship of me and his failures to impress anyone outside his one man circle jerk of conversing with his own sock puppets. You'd think someone who claims to be over the age of 50 would have something better to do with his time than to seek to stifle intelligent discussions of reforming and ending Welfare State government programs with his breathless calls for a totalitarian state, but perhaps FJ's government agency-subsidized computer access over at Chuckie Bolden's Astro-Islamic Outreach Center is another government program worthy of the chopping block.

I think it sad that he's taken up exploiting your difficulties at home and consumed time with real life issues to blast your blog with nonsense you'd otherwise moderate and delete on sight, but hey, that's the modus operandi of left-wing cowards as you well know.

Beamish is smart. It was the Stalker fags fault for posting the first post on this thread attacking beamish. That stalker fag is the cause of all aow's headaches. beamish is entirely innocent. He was nothing but respectful throughout the discussions here and never provocative.

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